Based On The Theory Of Knowledge Construction, Primary School: An Empirical Study Of Sts Curriculum Content To Build

As a new philosophy of science education, STS education emphasizes the interaction of science, technology, society and the applications of science technology in the social life and production, which reflects the current world trend of science education reformation. This paper mainly discussed the construction of primary STS curriculum content and the knowledge building activities for the STS curriculum content carried out by the third-grade students of a primary school in Nanjing. This study lasted one semester.This study first analyzed the current situation of primary science education in Gulou District of Nanjing, and pointed out some problems existing in current primary science education, such as excessive contents in textbooks, limited time of science teaching, not in-depth inquiry activities and so on. Based on STS educational philosophy, this study chose "Science","Information technology" and "Morality and Society" in primary schools to construct STS curriculum content. From dimensions of disciplines relations and disciplines content, this study proposed three constructing modes which were "discipline integrated model","partial integrated model", and "fully integrated model". Then this study took "discipline integrated model" as an example to show how to construct primary STS curriculum content.In the implementation of the STS curriculum, our main concerns are the development of community knowledge of the class and students’ collaborative cognitive responsibility. The study analyzed the development and changes of the community knowledge from two aspects:the students’acquired knowledge and the deepening process of problems. For the analysis of the development and changes of students’ collaborative cognitive responsibility, this study collected data from the number and density of community interaction. The results show that, students’ personal knowledge and the community knowledge are in continued growth in knowledge building activities. The knowledge students obtained not only met the requirements of the curriculum standards but also went beyond them. Meanwhile, students’ collaborative cognitive responsibilities had also been continuously improved. Students showed great interests in STS curriculum and knowledge building activities. Because teachers and students need a gradual process to understand and accept the STS curriculum and knowledge building activities, some issues required further consideration in this study, such as the organizational form of groups, the strategies of promoting the continuous improvement of students’views and so on.